Butterscotch
by darnedchild
Summary: Sherlock has a breakthrough.


I wrote this while recovering from a nasty case of food poisoning, after spending several hours at Urgent Care getting an IV (Eleven tries to get the needle in, eleven!), and it is un-betaed so any mistakes are mine and mine alone.

 **Butterscotch**

There it was again. That smell.

Butterscotch and mint.

Sherlock remained at his microscope, but he let his gaze shift to the right.

As he expected, Molly was absentmindedly tucking a roll of Butter Mint Polos back into the pocket of her lab coat.

He could see her cheeks hollow slightly as she sucked on the candy. He felt far too warm, and he had to look away.

Sherlock swallowed hard, then pushed himself away from the table.

This had gone on long enough. Far too long, really.

She'd been doing this to him for months. Taunting him with his preferred flavour of breath mint. The one that-up until recently-had never failed to give him a rare, brief moment of respite against the harsh bustle of the world that he usually craved.

There had been a roll of them in the jacket he'd "borrowed" from a tourist at one of the many bus stops he'd traveled through in the first days after his fall from the roof of St. Barts. He'd almost thrown them away when he'd ditched the jacket, but something made him hold on to them.

Mycroft would have scoffed about sentiment; but in the long, lonely days ahead, Sherlock had needed that small, sweet candy.

The butterscotch and mint flavor, even just the aroma, made him think of warmth and comfort, of security and dependability, of Home.

Not his home at Baker Street. That was wood smoke, controlled chaos, the violets of Mrs Hudson's perfume, boredom, tea, acrid chemicals, the tiniest hint of tobacco, the initial burst of excitement at the start of a case.

It wasn't his first home, either. Not the house he'd shared with his family until he had left for boarding school. That was biscuits and cakes, disappointment, books, frustration, wet fur, laughter, tears, dirt and rotting wood from a long neglected tree fort.

The candy had grown to be a touchstone while he was gone, a lifeline when he needed some small tangible reminder that there was something, somewhere, for him to return to.

But that had changed thanks to Molly Hooper and her insidious ways.

Now, when he smelled butterscotch and mint, his mind immediately went to long brown hair and deep brown doe eyes. It heard the lilt of a sweet, hesitant voice. It felt the sting of a tiny hand delivering a well deserved slap against his cheek, fear and concern masked by angry words. It imagined the softest, sweetest pain of small teeth nipping at his lip, the long line of his neck. It saw her in that black dress, with those red lips and that ridiculous bow. It pictured her in his silk dressing gown, waiting on his bed, the lapels open so he could see every curve and hollow of her body.

His comfort, his Home, was now linked to Molly Hooper and he need to put a stop to that before it became impossible to separate the two.

Assuming it wasn't already too late.

"Molly," he started. His voice was sharper than he'd intended.

Her head jerked up, her mouth already open to ask what he needed.

"Stop it."

She frowned and looked down at her work. "But you said you needed the results from the distillation as quickly as possible. Did you change your mind?"

Sherlock huffed, annoyed that she was playing coy. She knew, she had to know, that her deliberate attempt to associate herself with his . . . his . . . Well, it wouldn't work. Not any longer. "The candy, Molly."

"Oh." Her hand flew to the pocket were he'd seen her tuck the Polos. "I'm sorry. Am I being too loud? Or did you want one?" She pulled the roll out and offered it to him.

"That's not-No, I do not want one," he spit out, yanking the roll from her hand. "When did you notice? Two, three months ago?"

"Notice what, Sherlock? Have you been inhaling strange fumes, because I warned you what would happen if you didn't follow proper safety procedures in my lab again." She was already scanning the room for whatever it was that he might have got into while she was preoccupied elsewhere.

"That I prefer this brand and flavor of breath mint!"

She froze, still except for the way her chest rose and fell with each steady breath. "I have no idea what you're talking about, but you're starting to sound a little paranoid. I'm going to call John."

He growled in frustration and took the necessary steps to close the distance between them. "Why are you doing this to me? When did you start bringing these to work?"

Her gaze searched his face. She cautiously raised her hand to press the back against his forehead. For some reason, he let her. "Are you okay?"

Sherlock started to tell her he was fine, but that wasn't what came out of his mouth. "I thought I was, but now I don't know. Just answer the question, Molly."

"I don't know. Six, maybe seven years? I had to start keeping them in my pocket because you used to steal them from the desk when you were bored, before John was around to keep you occupied while you were waiting."

He wanted to tell her that was impossible. He would have remembered.

Except, he wouldn't have. Stealing candy from Molly's desk was unimportant. A candidate for deletion if he'd ever had one.

But the scent. He had remembered the scent. Remembered how it made him feel safe and warm, comfortable and secure. It reminded him of Home.

Of Molly.

"It was you."

"I'm sorry?" She looked so confused, and he couldn't blame her.

He barely understood what was happening himself. "It was always you."

He let himself touch her hair, bringing a lock forward so that he could see it better under the harsh fluorescent lights in the lab. "Butterscotch. My Home wasn't a place. It was you."

 **-~|The End|~-**


End file.
